Guarded Dreams

by L. J. Evans

  The End

  Epilogue

  Ava

  THE REST OF OUR LIFE

  “I got something to run past you

  I just hope I say it right

  So I take your hand and ask you

  Have you made plans for the rest of your life?”

  —Performed by Tim McGraw & Faith Hill

  —Written by Sheeran / Mcdaid / Mccutcheon

  “This is ridiculous,” I groused at Eli as I came out of our room. The room we’d been sharing for over three months now. The room that had become a haven for me of everything a home should be. Love. Hands. Hope. Someone there every night, making your world better.

  We’d had lots of visitors over the last few months: Jenna and Colby, Mac Truck, and even Mandy and Leena had made the journey before heading out on their two-week cruise. The visitors had made it feel more like a home to me. People coming to see us. Together. Making our two families one.

  Eli’s job consulting in Corpus Christi kept him busy and gone a lot. My signing ownership papers for the bar, had meant I was gone a lot. But we always came to the house that had become our home. The place we belonged.

  Now, I was wearing a stupid Harley Quinn costume, feeling like an idiot, while Eli was in a suit like Will Smith from Men in Black—only the second time in his life that he hadn’t worn a Coast Guard uniform for Halloween. It didn’t escape my notice that it was still, technically, a military uniform, but I hadn’t called him on it. The Coast Guard was still a painful loss to him even if he did his best to move forward without it.

  We were late. We should have been at the bar almost an hour ago, but I’d had second and third and fourth thoughts about my costume. Eli had come into the bedroom to help me with my jitters, but that had just ended with us with no clothes, skin on skin—which had only added to our lateness.

  “You look cute,” Eli said.

  “Cute?!”

  Eli laughed. “Are you mad at me for calling you cute?”

  “If I get mad at you, that means I still care. Worry when I don’t get mad,” I said, trying to sound like Harley Quinn as I quoted her words from Suicide Squad.

  He laughed again. His laughter had become a regular part of our life together. Something unexpected from the grumpy cadet that I’d first found in the beach house when it had belonged to my father. It was as if he’d been holding in the laughter, saving it for the right moments in his life, and I was thrilled that all those moments were mine. Us. Together.

  We were in these stupid costumes because Eli had remembered our conversation with his mom way back in April when I’d said my father had never let me dress up for Halloween. He’d kept his promise. We weren’t trick-or-treating, but he’d thrown himself into planning the Salty Dog’s 1st Annual Halloween Party. There was a kid’s fair in the bar’s parking lot until nine o’clock where people could bring their children for safe treats. All the shops in town had participated with booths and special activities. After nine o’clock, the party was set to move inside for adults-only-themed activities.

  The whole town was due to show up, and I felt very much like a child instead of the adult owner of a bar in an outfit that showed a lot of skin. Hence the time we’d spent in the bedroom instead of getting ready to leave.

  “If I say you look sexy, we’ll be back in the bedroom, and we’re already late,” Eli said, eyes drifting away from me instead of staying on me as they normally did.

  “What’s up with you?” I asked.

  “I can’t look at you. It’s killing me,” he groaned. “Maybe you should change. We can cut holes in a sheet. You can go as a ghost.”

  “I’m not hiding in a sheet.”

  He sighed and stuck out a hand for mine. My body responded to the silent command as always. I put my hand in his and let him lead me down the stairs to his truck.

  When we got to the bar, the parking lot was already crawling with people and kids. We parked in the alley and joined the crowd. People called out greetings to us as we made our way through the booths. I loved that Eli and I had become a part of the community, like the one I’d felt when I’d been with him in New London. Home and family all rolled into one.

  Andy and Lacey had finally turned the bar completely over to me in September. They were still around when I needed help, and they often covered for me when I needed time off. It kept them involved, and it helped me from feeling overwhelmed.

  They’d planned on coming tonight, working the bar and allowing me moments to celebrate with Eli and my friends—to have a Halloween that was mine for the first time ever.

  As the kids and families drifted off with the outside fair dwindling away, Eli and I moved inside. Ben and the band were dressed as zombies and already had typical Halloween music going—some light and stupid, some punk and rapid. The crowd was drinking neon, glowing shots that we’d designed specifically for tonight. It was fun. It was Halloween.

  I moved behind the bar, placing my Harley Quinn bat near the register, and started serving drinks. Eli joined me. We worked well together, like Andy and Lacey had worked well together, our bodies and minds speaking a language only we knew.

  My bat rolled off the counter, and I went to catch it, but it fell before I could reach it, hitting the corner of a tray of glasses as it went, the glasses going with it in a loud crash. Thankfully, most of the bar glasses were built to be tossed about, and none of them broke, but as I was stacking them back up, I noticed a teal-colored gift bag tucked into the recesses of the space behind the trays.

  “What’s this?” I asked, more to myself than anything, but somehow, Eli heard me over the band and the hum of the crowd.

  “Wait,” he said, panic invading his voice as it never did, but I’d already dug my hand into the bag and come out with a box.

  A jewelry-shaped box.

  He was at my side in an agile movement that belied the fact that he’d left behind his military life. I was already opening the box, though, not really registering him, or his panic, or his hands trying to pull it from me.

  It was a ring.

  A beautiful ring.

  Platinum, with a host of different colored stones built together to be a mosaic of color. A magical display of color. And it hit me then. The ring. Eli’s panic. And I turned to him with a smile on my face.

  “Is this mine?”

  “Not yet,” he said with a huff that did very much remind me of Mr. Grumpy.

  He pulled the box from my hand and closed the lid with a snap.

  “Why on earth did you leave it at the bar if you didn’t want me to see it?” I smiled up at him, happiness invading my soul. He hadn’t moved away. He was so close to me that I could feel the flex of his thighs on my mesh-covered ones as he stepped from foot to foot.

  “Frank just delivered it tonight. I haven’t had a chance to put it anywhere else.”

  I wrapped my arms around his middle. “Oh Captain, my Captain, did you have something you were going to ask me?”

  “Not on Halloween, with you dressed as Harley Quinn.”

  “You picked out the costume with me.”

  “But I wasn’t going to propose in costumes.”

  “You’re in a suit.”

  He sighed, resting his chin on the top of my head, pulling me closer.

  “Eli.”

  “Hmm?”

  “The cat’s out of the bag, so to speak.” I was smiling into his chest. I was ready. Ready to put his ring on my finger. Ready for us to put a name to everything we’d been through. Ready to make a statement to the world of what we already knew to be true. That we were each other’s. We were a family.

  He huffed one last time and then moved away from me, grabbing the mic we always left on the bar shelf before effortlessly jumping onto the bar. He looked down at me as he had back in July when he’d surprised me by showing up out of nowhere. When he’d surprised me by trying ever so badly to sing me the song that I’d written about us—one of the many son
gs I’d written about us—it had been the best song I’d ever heard, no matter that his deep voice had sounded like he was being strangled.

  It had been gorgeous, reverberating down my spine and filling my soul. Because he’d sung it for me. Because he’d gone out of his way to learn the song, and had the band learn the song, and arranged it so that he could surprise me. It had filled my heart to what I thought would be its fullest point ever.

  But I was wrong. Because tonight, with him on the bar once more, tapping the mic to get everyone’s attention, I felt like my heart might have swollen an impossible notch more.

  Eli’s voice effectively shut Ben and the band off. They came to a screeching halt in the middle of “Monster Mash.”

  “Hey, everyone, sorry to interrupt, but you can blame it on Ava.”

  Everyone looked to me, and I was already smiling, knowing what was coming.

  “This is not at all how I wanted this moment to go, but you know Ava. Everything is on her schedule.”

  The crowd chuckled. He stuck a hand out, and I followed it by pulling myself up onto the bar top with him.

  “Four years ago, I was stunned into silence by a voice and a body that somehow seemed already familiar to me even though I’d never met her before,” Eli continued, his eyes locking on mine. “When I met her for the second time, she told me that she wanted her words to be like the aurora borealis. A life-changing phenomenon for the world. Except, she didn’t know that she’d already changed my entire world with one song.”

  He stopped for a minute as if he had to catch his breath, but instead, he’d been thinking. “Anyone who knows you knows you love your quotes. I believe that it was Eleanor Roosevelt that said, ‘The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.’ My only dream now is of a future with you. You’re the beauty in my life. We’ll create our own magical display.” He pulled my hand and placed it on his chest where I could feel the batter of his heart against my skin. “Ava, will you marry me?”

  I wanted to say something funny. I wanted to say something moving. I wanted to say something that would be remembered. However, in that moment, full of so many emotions that my body couldn’t process them all, all I could do was nod and grin. Like I really was psycho Harley ready to bash a head in with a bat.

  Eli saw the nod, and he saw the wave of emotion on my face, and his softened. He pulled me closer, the mic by both of our lips. “Just so the crowd knows…is that a yes?”

  I nodded again and then found my voice. “Yes, oh Captain, my Captain. I’m all yours.”

  His lips found mine, and even as his lips commanded my body, he joined our hands again, slipping the ring onto my finger and once more allowing me to find safe harbor in a world of his making. Of our making. Under lights made by a disco ball and the crowd clapping and cheering. But it didn’t matter. Eli was always right. We were our own magical display. We were us.

  Really, The End.

  About the Book

  I’ve done my best to not consciously misrepresent anything about the military, music, Juilliard, knee injuries, breast cancer, or any of the quotes Ava uses in this book. But I may have taken a few liberties for the sake of entertainment.

  I researched the U.S. Coast Guard, their lifestyle, jobs, and their stations. I wanted to represent the pride and honor Coasties feel in being part of the U.S. military as well as the family that they truly are to each other. I hope that nothing I’ve written disrespects the honor and service of these men and women as I hold them in the highest regard.

  The Aurora Borealis painting by Frederic Edwin Church is really owned and on exhibit at the Smithsonian Art Museum in Washington D.C. For purposes of the book, I had it on loan to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. Neither the Expeditions Exhibit nor the painting’s participation in it are real.

  The Hayes quote was sourced from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_Borealis_(painting)). Most other quotes used in the story were sourced from www.BrainyQuote.com.

  For the purpose of the book, I sped up some of the patellar injury cast and recovery timelines. I didn’t do this to make Eli into a superhero, but because it was more effective for the book’s timeline.

  Early detection of breast cancer is critical to successful treatment. Please do not skip any of the regular exams (self or with your doctor) that are required to catch this ugly beast before it turns your life inside out. Stage 1 breast cancer, before in the lymph nodes, has a high rate of successful treatment if caught at that stage. For more information, please contact your doctor and the American Cancer Society website.

  Any other errors I made in facts, I beg your forgiveness, for it was done without intention and with the heart of the story in mind.

  Acknowledgements

  My first acknowledgement is to my husband, who I adore more than words, thank you for being the person to take me from my moments of seriousness and self-doubt to laughter. Thank you for not letting me give up on this dream of mine and for supporting it with your time, our money, and your own effort. I am so lucky to have you as my partner in this crazy thing called life. I love our life together. I promise I’ll try to be back on my feet soon. I love you.

  To my daughter who has begun her own creative path, thank you for being the best critic and line editor I could have. Thank you for not only helping me craft my words but encouraging me, for understanding my creative drive and allowing me to be a part of your own creative world as well. I am amazed every day by your strength, your love, and your own personal journey. You were the very best gift to have ever entered my world. I love you.

  Thank you to my big sister who wouldn’t let me quit till I published, for always being my first alpha reader, and for telling me when I’m being stupid. Isn’t that what siblings are for, after all? Ego checks and ego lifts!

  Thank you to my parents who have been so proud of me that they show my book off wherever they go. To my mom, thanks for loving all my words even when they were oh so bad when I was a kid. And to my dad, thanks for reading my books even when they’re romances novel instead of westerns.

  Thank you to Megan Keith at Designed With Grace cover designs for not only my beautiful cover, but understanding the creative need in all of us. For reading my words and sharing them with the world when that wasn’t part of your job. I’m blessed to have found you.

  To Jenn at Jenn Lockwood Editing Services, thank you for being a partner in my creative process and for showing your love and support for my books. I never thought I could find someone who would completely get what I was trying to say even as a I rambled. Thank you.

  To the bloggers who have shared my stories with the world on your own time and your own dime, I cannot say enough. The independent book world would not be what it is today without you. An extra special thank you to these bloggers who helped me get this book out into the world: Rachel at NovelMomma, Launa at Energy Rae, Ashleigh at Page Once Turned, Candyce at The Book Dutchesses, Heather at Books and a Blanket, Stacie at Boren Books, and Sophie at Digital Dirty Girl, as well as a whole host of other bloggers.

  To the other independent authors who have helped keep me sane on this journey including Kelsey Kingsley, Amanda Johnson, Clare Lesbirel, Katy Ames, and Lauren Helms, I have not enough words. Thank you for sharing and supporting each other in ways that I never thought possible…without jealousy and while truly holding each other’s crowns up when they fall. Hugs to all of you.

  Thank you to Amy Harmon for not only inspiring me with your words but with your kindness and generosity.

  Finally, but certainly not least, thank you to my readers. To those of you that I’ve come to know personally and those that I have not. Michelle Fritz, you are selfless and beautiful in all you do for us authors. Dee Shelvey thank you for making me smile very day when I’ve been ill. Michelle Odland, you allow me to be weak and then show me how I am strong, thank you. To every one of you who have read even one of my stories, THANK YOU!

  About the Auth
or

  Award winning author, LJ Evans, lives in the California Central Valley with her husband, daughter, and the three terrors called cats. She's been writing, almost as a compulsion, since she was a little girl and will often pull the car over to write when a song lyric strikes her. While she currently spends her days teaching 1st grade in a local public school, she spends her free time reading and writing, as well as binge-watching original shows like The Crown, Victoria, and Stranger Things.

  If you ask her the one thing she won’t do, it’s pretty much anything that involves dirt—sports, gardening, or otherwise. But she loves to write about all of those things, and her first published heroine was pretty much involved with dirt on a daily basis, which is exactly why LJ loves fiction novels—the characters can be everything you’re not and still make their way into your heart.

  Her debut novel, MY LIFE AS A COUNTRY ALBUM, was the Independent Author Network's 2017 YA Book of the Year and Audiobook Obsession’s 2nd Most Recommended Romance Audiobook. For more information about the MY LIFE AS AN ALBUM series, check LJ out at any of these sites:

  LJ Evans Books

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  Books by LJ Evans

  My Life as an Album Series

  My Life as a Country Album — April 2017

  My Life as a Pop Album — January 2018

  My Life as a Rock Album — July 2018

  My Life as a Mixtape — November 2018

  untitled secret my life as an album series project — coming December 2019

  Standalone Novels

  Guarded Dreams —May 2019

  Coming Soon

  Mac, Truck, & Brady standalone novels

  Sunshine & Elm — contemporary women’s fiction

  Untitled, Ezra and Elara—urban fantasy

  Continue reading for a preview of a novel in the